Turning a browser into a web server is not a big leap in technology. That is not a hard problem.
Why I am excited about Opera Unite and not about this firefox extension is that Opera themselves thinks that this will change the face of internet applications. They are excited about it and they will persue this to the end. That is the whole point.
It is not about technology. It is about how you push it and persue it. It is all about your vision.
My vision says that Opera Unite isn't going to live up to the hype. Users don't want a music player in their browser, they want a good music player. Opera would do better to build a sturdy, dedicated server side JavaScript environment than to put a weak offering into their browser.
"Users don't want a music player in their browser, they want a good music player."
And, incidentally, iTunes already has sharing from within the player and it is very widely used.
Anyway, Unite is an interesting experiment, even though it probably won't revolutionize anything on its own. The "this will revolutionize the web!" PR sort of obscures the actually utility/novelty that this likely has for a subset of users.
Turning a browser into a web server is not a big leap in technology. That is not a hard problem.
Why I am excited about Opera Unite and not about this firefox extension is that Opera themselves thinks that this will change the face of internet applications. They are excited about it and they will persue this to the end. That is the whole point.
It is not about technology. It is about how you push it and persue it. It is all about your vision.